Choices
by Ember Nickel
Summary: Is anything really meant to be? What happens after the epilogue--my attempt to rationalize it and fill in a plot hole.


"_Because that truly is the way it was meant to be._"

Courtney Chetwynde looked nervously up at her husband, Bobby Pendragon. He was breathing slowly, eyes darting around the room as if trying to solve some thorny problem. Courtney glanced towards the door—the man who had come several days before had said he would come back for the "journals". But there was no one there.

"No," Bobby whispered. "No, it isn't."

"What?" Courtney asked nervously. "What do you mean?"

"That..." "That man" wouldn't cut it, Bobby felt. It wasn't some stranger—it was _him_. Some other self of his.

From the very first pages that Courtney had read, he knew that the storyteller didn't just have the same name as he did—he behaved the same way, said the same retorts that Bobby was silently coming up with. Often he had interrupted Courtney. "But why didn't they--"

"Ssh!" she would say. "Wait for it."

That had stopped later on, when Courtney was laughing too hard to read. The Courtney in the story was behaving just as _she_ would expect.

"Everything those Travelers went through," said Bobby, "what did it teach them?"

"Well," Courtney began, "that humans are basically good people. Gars and Klees, whatever the species, people can be trusted to live their own lives and, more often than not, they'll make the right choices."

"Choices," Bobby echoed. "We get to choose how we want to live our lives."

"That's right."

"So if we're really the ones that get to choose how to live, how can anything be _meant _to be? There's right and wrong, good and bad, but nothing set in stone until we choose."

It seemed an easy question to Courtney. "Well, the right choices are the ones that are meant to happen, and the wrong ones aren't."

"That's not enough," he insisted. "The good choices are right and the bad ones are wrong. But none of this was _meant_ to be. They just got lucky."

Courtney looked down at the journal. "It says that him being ready for whatever came next was what was meant to be. That makes sense, doesn't it? The spirits of Solara, they wouldn't have created someone who couldn't have been ready."

"I suppose," Bobby admitted. "Still, they cut it close."

"But it worked out," Courtney reminded him.

"Yeah," said Bobby. "Yeah, they did it."

He seemed to smile faintly, but Courtney was distracted by the door opening again.

"You're back," she said flatly, then looked at him again. "Press?"

The man shrugged. "I take it you finished the story?"

She nodded, placing the thirty-seventh journal into the box with the others. "You wouldn't be here if we hadn't."

"There is that," he admitted, crossing the floor and taking the box from her. He glanced at Bobby and seemed to whisper _Thank you_.

And then the world disappeared.

Bobby was standing in the Stony Brook gym. Again.

"Is this real?" he asked, unsure who was there to hear him. "Lifelight? Another one of--"

_Another one of those_.

He remembered the life that had just ended, growing old with Courtney on Earth. _Second_ Earth. And he remembered, too, his life and struggle as a Traveler, realer than any journal.

"It's over, isn't it? I'm back in Solara?"

He walked out of the gym, and there was Press, perched atop his motorcycle as if to embark on a road trip. "Hey."

"Bobby!" Press beamed. "Welcome home."

"Thanks." Bobby ran towards the motorcycle; Press had already jumped off it by the time Bobby caught up. "It feels..." He eventually pulled himself out of the embrace. "...good to be here. Surprisingly."

"We did our job a little too well," Press chuckled. "Was that what you wanted?"

Bobby thought back on the decades he had spent on Earth. There was only the one, now. "I think so. And that's as close to what was "meant to be" as I need to get."

"You're welcome," said Press. "Hop on?"

"Am I going to fit on that?" Bobby squinted at the motorcycle, then looked down at himself. He seemed around eighteen, however old he'd been when they'd finally defeated Saint Dane.

"It'll be big enough."

And it was, somehow.

Solara was bigger than Bobby had ever seen it; Press claimed it was still growing, but every patch they passed through was beautiful. The first patch they saw was a city block; in the center was a very familiar-looking building.

"That's the library!" Bobby exclaimed. "Patrick's library."

"We call it the Chelsea library now," Press explained. "Patrick has been here for a while now, but is still the most nostalgic."

"He has the right to be—he was living in utopia already."

"He _was_," Press said gently. "Come on in, I think you'll like our special collection."

"Right, right, it's still subject to human imperfections and all that. And I'm not checking anything out, I just got done reading—oh."

They took up two bookshelves, each full of separate shelves. The journals of the Travelers of Halla—written, typed, recorded, but all with a story to tell.

"Pendragon!" exclaimed Patrick, walking in from another room. "Welcome back."

"Thanks," said Bobby. "Still getting used to it all."

"There's a lot to get used to."

Press was still looking at the journals. "They're back in order already? All the trouble I go to moving them around and you sort them this quickly?"

"Me? No," laughed Patrick. "Elli works fast."

"Elli's here?" Bobby interrupted.

"She's been here for some time," Press said gravely. "You had a full life on Earth ahead of you. She...did not."

As much as it made sense, something still felt strange that Bobby couldn't quite pinpoint. Nevertheless, he was content to leave the library and continue exploring Solara.

Gunny had also returned there, and from their conversation it sounded like Alder had as well. Bobby couldn't track the Traveler from Denduron down, however; it seemed as if he was busy watching his home territory change. The conflicts between the tribes had left Denduron devastated, and even though a new generation was rising to replace the old, their political traditions were in jeopardy. The Bedoowan and Milago were still united, but an intertribal council looked set to replace the monarchy.

Bobby pitied Alder. The warrior's skill had been invaluable in battle after battle, and his mentoring helped Bobby to grow into the fighter he needed to be. In the new peace of Solara, his abilities seemed less necessary.

_Then again, it took a basketball-playing teenager to save all of Halla. He'll find his place eventually,_ Bobby told himself.

Loor, Siry, and Spader were not yet on Solara; Bobby assumed they were all still living alternate lives like he had. He caught glimpses of Kasha and Aja, but they were only shadows like he had seen on his first trip there. Were they reliving lives where they hadn't died at such a young age?

Mark only had one life, and his had also been curtailed. Despite how much he'd grown, physically and mentally, in the five years among the Third Earth rebels, part of him was still the small, nervous, person he had been on Second Earth. Just as in Bobby's Earth life, Mark's heart had given way early on.

Nevertheless, he'd still accomplished plenty rebuilding Earth. While others worked on organizing society, Mark focused on the physical process of cleaning up the ruins of New York and beyond. It was too big a task for any one person to do alone, or even many people to do by themselves. Fortunately, they had help. Forge proved its worth once again—a new generation of robots roamed the streets of New York, but they were there to clear away the clutter and make way for a new city.

"I was scared to try building them at first," Mark admitted. "But eventually they talked me into it. The dados weren't bad in themselves."

"No," Bobby agreed, "it was just that they had been designed by an evil demon who wanted to create a new Halla."

"That does tend to get in the way of things, yeah."

Earlier, Bobby had been confident that inventing Forge was certainly not how things were meant to be. Seeing what was happening on Earth, though, gave him new hope; it was up to the rebels to make the right choices with the technology they had, and it seemed as if they were doing so.

His family was there, and so were the families of the other Travelers. After spending so long wondering where they had gone, it was a relief simply to relax with them. There was enough to do—more importantly, enough people to meet—that Solara never got boring. Bobby felt himself drawn "day" after "day" to the Chelsea Library—not to read other Travelers' journals, nor even to revisit his own, but to meet the spirits who wanted to discover the truth for themselves. Captain Hirsch's face when he saw the journals he had come across so long ago was a sight to behold. Then there was the nervous gangster from First Earth, Loque the Jakill, Bokka the Rokador...so many people who didn't know how their choices had helped to shape the future of Halla.

Eventually, the other Travelers showed up; Loor, Siry, and Spader from their alternate lives, Aja and Kasha from whatever sort of timeline they'd been in. Courtney did as well, seeming to present Bobby with yet another sort of choice.

He didn't expect her to remember the other life he had lived—Mark didn't—and she lived down to expectations. Still, he could not deny that he cared intensely for her. Nor could he deny that he cared intensely for Loor, as well.

As it turned out, however, the "choice" was not really difficult to make. They had all changed from that night of the basketball game; Travelers and acolytes, Earthlings and Zadaans. Mark, especially, had changed. And when Bobby saw the way he looked out for Courtney—how both of them looked out for each other—he wasn't sure if they were the way things were meant to be, but they were the way things _were_, and the better off for it. As for himself, if he had all of eternity to spend with Loor, he was very fortunate indeed.

Though he was as close as ever to his acolytes, he spent lots of time with Loor as well. They were sitting by a river from one of her memories when all of a sudden she froze, as if listening to something only she could hear. "I'll be right back," she told Bobby.

He nodded—they had all the time in the cosmos, after all—as she departed. In the distance, he could make out the sound of indistinct but happy voices.

They grew closer, after a while. "I should not like to be an old woman again," someone was grousing. "The way they babied me was quite ridiculous."

Bobby recognized that voice. "Saangi?"

"Pendragon! You're here, too."

"You don't know the half of it," Loor laughed. "Let me explain."

As Loor recounted the nature of Solara, the same thought that had been nagging at Bobby since his first visit to the Chelsea Library nagged at him again. That time, though, he was able to put it into words. Leaving Loor and Saangi, he wandered away from the river. "Press?"

And there was Press, appearing as seamlessly as if they had stepped between the territories. "Hello there, Bobby."

"I have a question. And maybe you can't answer, but I've been wondering for a while."

Press chuckled. "I won't withhold any information from you, if that' s what you're worried about."

"Saangi, Loor's acolyte, just...died, I guess. I mean, she's here now, and I didn't see her before."

"That's generally a good indication, yes."

"Why—why do we have to wait for them? Shouldn't we be able to travel forward in time until everyone we know is here? Or is there any time here?"

"We're the creation of the people of Halla, Bobby, not the other way around. We're stuck in _their_ time."

It seemed to make sense. As time passed, Solara grew, until the day when none of the Travelers recognized any of the new spirits joining them.

Halla was putting itself back together. Solara was growing strong, and its inhabitants were real and substantial, no longer flickers. Which was what made the shape Bobby saw out of the corner of his eye one day so strange. It was only a shadow—yet he had no doubt of who he had seen.

"It was Naymeer," he explained, hoping Press would have an answer for that as well. "I only saw him for a moment, and he was fading out, but he's still here."

"So he is," Press said mildly.

"What about Saint Dane? Have you seen him?"

"Not yet."

"_Yet_?"

"I assume he will be back." Before Bobby could react, Press put up a hand. "Back _here_. I do not think Halla has anything more to fear from him. People are learning the story of what has happened—they will not fall for him again."

"But he'll be back here?"

"Just as Naymeer is already returning. They are like you and I—there is still desire out there, among people, desire for perfection. As long as this drive to be the utter best exists—and it will always exist, since none are perfect—the energy that brings Naymeer and Saint Dane to life will be there as well."

_Great_, Bobby thought. _And I thought being cooped up on Ibara with Saint Dane was bad, I'm not going to debate philosophy with him _forever_._

And then he had another thought.

"And what about the belief that Halla should be better for everyone?"

"That's alive and well," said Press. "Look around you."

"That has to be giving energy to something, too. To some_one_." It didn't make sense, not with what he'd been told. But it had to be true. "He lied to her! He lied to her to keep her under his thumb, so she'd be too scared. But it didn't work."

Press was genuinely confused. "What? Who lied to who?"

"Saint Dane. Someday people will learn the truth about what happened. And then, then they'll believe."

It was a long time waiting, but Bobby waited. He didn't tell anyone, just in case he was wrong and cursed them to an eternity of false hope. He waited until the day when the Pop Academy opened on Quillan, and children born into a new Halla heard the story of their territory and some of its heroes. They heard the story of Nevva Winter, the Traveler who let no one and nothing stand in her way of creating a better Halla. They, too, believed in a hope stronger than any false fear.

And in Solara, belief took form. A spirit of hope and progress walked through the darkness of Solara until she was alone no longer, met by a spirit of indomitable love. Bobby Pendragon wasn't sure whether anything was meant to be, not anymore. But if anything was, what he saw certainly qualified.

"Nevva," whispered Elli. "Welcome home."


End file.
